Living without a car in Minneapolis is wonderful and rewarding for me, but can also be difficult, and seems to puzzle many of the people I know. I have friends in cities all over the country, but Minneapolis is the only place where I know people who claim that they never use mass transit. My worries about global warming and the social impact of the car make it hard for me to understand why anybody in their right mind would even want a car, so the anti-transit bias I see in the Twin Cities troubles me.

In Minneapolis, transit gets a bad rap. It's rarely mentioned in the local media, and if it is, it is talked about with condescension. 20% of the households in the city of Minneapolis don't even have a car, but you don't seem to hear from them very often.

Six years ago a couple of my transit-using friends and I worked together to make a few episodes of a public access TV show called On the Bus. We had the misperception that by making a public access show about public transit, we could raise the profile of transit here. Soon after we started making the show, my two friends moved away from Minneapolis, and I couldn't conceive how I could keep the show going without them. It took the bus strike earlier this year to convince me that I had to start making these shows again.

During the bus strike, very powerful people were saying that we don't really need public transit. I even had close friends tell me that if I wanted to keep on living without a car, I might have to leave Minneapolis. Instead of moving, I decided to take out my frustrations by making a TV show.

On Transit is that show. Like the original episodes of On the Bus six years ago, as much as possible of the show takes place on transit. I interview transit riders and transit advocates and try to get out some information about the importance and necessity of transit.

I'm also looking for transit users who want to meet me on the bus or train to talk about transit, as well as artists and performers who want to talk or perform or make art at transit stations.

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